It
is currently impossible to gather in its entirety, indeed to reconstitute
in its integrity, Marcel Duchamp's book collection. And maybe this will
forever be the case, given that the man lived in small apartments or
hotels for long periods of time, and that he moved a lot between two
continents. Certainly, this precariousness did not favor the preservation
of any given collection, apart from maybe one during the 20's in his
chess-playing period (after he left The Large Glass unfinished,
in 1923) - but that collection is of the artwork of Picabia and Brancusi
and is a different question.

Meanwhile,
the thought is not forbidden that one could attempt a complete collection,
or at least the most thorough list, of all printed matter that could
have been, at one time or another, connected with Duchamp: he preserved
things, his family, friends and female companions preserved things (there
is evidence of this), and Duchamp mentions these things in his writings,
interviews, etc. It is immense work, just beginning, and must be taken
slowly.

Within
this ensemble, it is already possible to denote a sub-ensemble: those
of the exemplars which were autographed to Duchamp.(1) The "constellation"
formed by these books which have been marked with a handwritten addition
(and even, in certain cases, a pictorial addition) is precious in that
it allows us to make up a portrait of the dedicatee through the various
"titles" he is given.(2)

Not in
the slightest bit exhaustive, I will only rapidly tackle a few dedications
chosen from among those I know. Only one, the last, has in fact been
published.(3)

***

I will
begin very simply with a non-dated dedication (but seemingly from 1948,
date of this book's publication) from an old accomplice, André
Breton (1896-1966).

On the
occasion of his stay in North America (1941-1946), Breton, who did not
speak English and lived within a circle of exiled French intellectuals
(including Marcel Duchamp from 1942 on) did not hesitate to visit French-speaking
areas this side of the Atlantic: Martinique (April-May 1941), the Province
of Quebec (August-November 1944) and Haïti (December 1945-February
1946).(4) It was during one of these trips that Martinique charmeuse
de serpents, a collection of prose and poems by André Breton
and André Masson, was initiated. It was then published after
Breton's return to Paris whilst Duchamp, "number 1 Friend,"
was back in the United States.

In the
autumn of 1960, Duchamp said of his longtime friendship with Breton
(they had known each other since the summer of 1921): Une grande
sympathie avec Breton. Il y avait une sympathie comme avec Picabia.
Une sympathie d'homme à homme, plutôt que de théorie
à théorie [A great sympathy with Breton. There was
a sympathy as with Picabia. A sympathy from man to man, rather than
from theory to theory.](5) As for the window motif, it is worth remembering
that it allows us to bring these two men together. In 1924, Breton wrote
the first Surrealist Manifesto in which he reflected on the automatically
written sentence: quelque
chose comme: 'Il y a un homme coupé en deux par la fenêtre'
[something like: 'there is a man cut in two by the window']. Then in
1936, Breton wrote a poem, Au lavoir noir, which was illustrated
by Duchamp with the reproduction of a window, La bagarre d'Austerlitz
[Brawl at Austerlitz], a readymade (1921).

***

When,
in 1954, Robert Lebel (1901-1986) asked André Breton to write
a preface for his new book, Chantage de la beauté, Lebel
had already started working on the biography and catalog that would
be Sur Marcel Duchamp, his next book.(6)

Breton
wrote the preface in November 1954 and the Editions de Beaune published
the book in Paris in April 1955.(7) Lebel sent it to Duchamp with this
dedication: Pour Marcel Duchamp / real esthète / New York
City / Robert Lebel. [For Marcel Duchamp / real aesthete / New York
City / Robert Lebel.] Duchamp would later respond via letter (4 August
1955):

Artists
of all time are like gamblers in Monte-Carlo and a blind lottery
draws certain ones andruins
the others. [...]I do not believe in painting in itself. A painting
is not made by the painter but by those who look at it and grant
it their favor [...]

- in an
interview with Jean Schuster, January 1955, published in Le Surréalisme,
même (Paris,
no. 2, Spring 1957):

[...]
a work is made entirely by those who look at it or read it
and who make it survive by their accolades or even their condemnation.

- in The
Creative Act, a brief paper written in English in January 1957, given
in Houston in April
1957, and published in Art News (New York, no. 4, Summer 1957):

All
in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the
spectator brings the work incontact
with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner
qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

As we can see, none
of these writings or sayings were known of at the time that Lebel published
his book and Lebel, on this question, was opposed and would continue
to be opposed to Duchamp=s radical position. For example, on p. 11-12:

Sometimes,
we are brought to conceive of him [the artist] as of pure vegetation:
he is the "almond tree which blossoms." Sometimes, the
hypothesis most favorable to his intervention is that his work
is a trial, a kind of timid intentionality, a request, a still
amorphous project, indeterminate and of which he does not himself
know the content and which he submits, as if humbly, to
others for approbation. [...]
The role of the spectator is thus inordinately inflated. As for
the artist, he is purely and simply mistaken for the object he
presents.

And, for another example,
in Note pour un post-Duchamp, an article written in 1974 and
published in Marcel Duchamp (Paris, Belfond, coll. "Les Dossiers,"
1985):

The
debate is open among the "onlookers," to which he unwisely
delegated full power and who are today in control of the ground.

The spectator
(who looks) and the master (who possesses) can, of course, be one and
the same. The "crucial moment when all worth constitutes itself
[is the moment when], well away from already cleared paths and established
reputations, the work enters into contact with a spectator for the first
time" and must necessarily be distinguished from the moment when
the master, who speaks the "aesthete's idiom,""does
not hesitate to separate himself from his horses, his works of art or
his women, without ever losing the notion of their market value":
when the value becomes a market value.(9)

As for
the artist himself, he "is a man who plastically realizes the attitude
that he cannot in fact achieve. [...] Most religious painters delivered
themselves from the temptation of sanctity through their painting. Conversely,
as brilliantly demonstrated by Marcel Duchamp, it is in acceding to
an autonomous behavior that an artist can emancipate himself from art."(10)]
But Duchamp, who is a "real aesthete" per Lebel's dedication,
is also the opposite of Van Gogh for whom "conduct itself supplants
its representation. What he paints is Van Gogh grappling with the world
not the conduct of Van Gogh which this artist admits he is incapable
of achieving and, by extension, offering."(11)] If Van Gogh, the
"suicide of society" as Artaud puts it, "refuses to aesthetically
fill the gap that normally separates work behavior [what he puts
forth] from real behavior [what he takes on]," Duchamp, soon to
declare himself "anartist," is already removed from the process
and all that there is at stake.(12)]

Duchamp
juxtaposes English and French so that "Nevertheless" is to
"il m'en reste beaucoup collé à ma matière
grise" in his response what "real"
is to "esthète" in the dedication, with this exception
(which could also be a distinction): there lies within a transformation.
And yet, it=s because of duchampian angrais(13)] that Areal esthète@
must above all not sound like real estate [biens fonciers] or
real estate agent [agent immobilier], Duchamp being "immobile"
(motionless) enough "at great speed" to be amused by an "agent
immobilier," (14)] and enough of a "marchand du sel" (salt
seller) to be amused by the "bien foncée" (really dark) color
of a "chantage" (blackmail).(15)]

If Duchamp=s
relationship with philosophy (Plato) or aesthetics (Lebel) seems hasty,
at what speed did he read scientific or technical books (mathematics,
photography, etc.) or literature (poetry, novels, etc.)? Maybe this
question, which implies a long practice, can never be satisfyingly answered
in detail, given that too many books from his collection in its actualized
state are now missing, and that references to the books he might have
consulted at the Saint-Genevieve library when he worked there as an
intern from 1913 to 1915 have disappeared as well.

In any
case, "real esthète" can be literally crushed or squeezed
into the single word "reste" (which in French means both "left,"
as in the verb, and "remains," as in the noun) and "Platon"
can be interpreted as the shadow or offhanded rhyme of "East Hampton."

***

I will
continue with two dedications from completely different horizons but
which meet in the exact formulation of the Atitle@ granted Duchamp.

The "Premier testament"
[First Testament] for the "first anarchist," of course. Alain
Bosquet, poet and novelist, is also the author of an anthology: Anthologie
de la poésie américaine des origines à nos jours (Paris,
Stock, 1956). Since Duchamp went back to Paris in 1958, it was in New York
that Alain Bosquet sent this exemplary.

This
first exemplary of
this book of Science, taken from the press eight weeks before the
date of
publication is reserved for
Marcel Duchamp, first pataphysicist of our time (and
of all others, according to the
"equivalent worth" promulgated
by the inventor of Science).

According
to all accounts, Taylor and Duchamp had known each other since 1959. Then,
translating Histoire de la peinture surréaliste by Marcel
Jean (and Arpad Mezei) in 1961, Taylor introduced Shattuck to Duchamp
in 1961.

The "first
exemplary" for the "first pataphysicist," of course. Thus,
over-determination came into play on Bosquet's part from paratext (title
of the book) to paratext (dedicating of the exemplary), and on Taylor's
part from circumstance (speed of printing) to paratext.(16)]
But is it deliberate, we ask ourselves, that the word "exemplaire,"
a masculine word in the French, becomes feminine, that "valeur,"
a feminine word becomes masculine, and that "homage," which
is not a French word but an English word, is masculine when spelled in
the french (hommage) but here modified with a feminine adjective?(17)]Is
the inversion of gender related to 'pataphysics,' - "science
of the particular, in spite of the fact that it is claimed there exists
only the science of the general?"(18)]
And isn=t pataffectionate (pata as a prefix) a way of Aresponding,@
in all lateness, to this letter from Duchamp (17 June 1960) that ended
by cordiapata (pata as a suffix)?

***

I will
end, very simply, with a non-dated dedication (but seemingly from 1937,
date of this small book's publication) from an unknown person, Jehan Mayoux
(1904-1975):(19)

To
Marcel Duchamp since he is not a myth as I believed for a long time but
a man - which is so much better.

-Maïs,
Paris, not on sale to the general public, 1937 [printing completed
on 3 February 1937], reprinted in Oeuvres, tome 1, Ussel
(Corrèze), Peralta Ed., 1976.

Duchamp
wrote to Jehan Mayoux (8 March 1956) and previously to Katherine Dreier
(5 November 1928), to Magda and Walter Pach (17 October 1934), to Jean
Crotti (17 August 1952), to Walter Arensberg (23 January 1954) and to
André Breton (4 October 1954) particularly lucid and clear-cut
letters about art and language, the market and the preservation and interpretation
of art.

Even
though Duchamp practically never used the word man, except in
a statement like AThere is no solution because there is no problem.
Problem is the invention of man - it is nonsensical@ (to Harriet and
Sidney Janis, 1945) where it is a question of man, not of a
man, it remains, to give only one example in the guise of a paradox,
that this man who practiced silence finally accepted that, from interviews
to dialogues, from conversations to papers, an abundant spoken oeuvre
would form itself.(20)]

Wouldn't
this near naïve - touching, even - dedication written more than
thirty years before Duchamp died still resonate today, more than thirty
years after his death? What is a myth,(21)] indeed, if not, in one sense
(and I quote, very simply, from the Nouveau Petit Robert dictionary
of 1993), a "simplified image, often illusory, which people elaborate
upon or accept about an individual [...] and which plays a determining
part in their behavior and appreciation?"(22)] But mustn't we obtain,
at the point we have reached, at this end of a century, with a being
as complex as Marcel Duchamp, French and American artist and anartist,
the utmost precision possible as far as what he has said and done?

Notes

1.The
dedication of an exemplary, in the form of an autograph (thus private),
is to be distinguished from the dedication of a work in print (thus
public): one says autograph an exemplary, but dedicate a work.
And, as specified by Gerard Genette, "given that the exemplary represents
the work, it is validated both through and as the work." This book is
a study of the paratexts, which will be "around the text, within the
very space of the volume" (that's the peritext) or "at a more respectful
(or more cautious) distance [...] outside of the book" (that's the epitext),
with peritext and epitext sharing "exhaustively and without residue
the spatial field of the paratexts." The dedication of a work as much
as the dedication (autograph) of an exemplary are part of the peritext.
Inversely, one will have to collect, at least in a list, the most complete
ensemble of printed matter that Duchamp had, at one time or another,
dedicated, such as: Rrose Sélavy (1939); the miniature books
published by PAB (1958-1960); Robert Lebel's book Marcel Duchamp
(1959); and The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1960),
the "green book" produced from the contents of the Green Box,
etc.

2.It
would be helpful to compare these terms to the ones which can be found,
for example, in different statements published on the occasion of the
1973 exhibition by the Museum of Modern Art and the Philadelphia Museum
of Art and in a review published on the occasion of the Beaubourg exhibition
(1977); see both "A Collective Portrait of Marcel Duchamp," pp. 179-229,
and "Faut-il vraiment vénérer Duchamp?" (a file by Philippe Sers), Connaissance
des Arts, Paris, no. 299 (January 1977), pp 46-55.

3.It
is in the Mary Reynolds collection and, as such, was published in Hugh
Edward's Surrealism and it's Affinities: The Mary Reynolds Collection,
The Art Institute of Chicago, 1956. The others come from the archives
of Marcel Duchamp's succession, Villiers-sous-Grez, (Seine-et-Marne,France).

4.During
his stay in Quebec, Breton wrote his last long, original work: Arcane
17 (December 1944) which brings closure to the cycle of narrative begun
with Nadja (1928) and then continued with Les vases communicants
(1932) and L'amour fou (1937). Other books published after
1944 and before Breton's death were collections of either his articles
or poems.

6.The
writing of Sur Marcel Duchamp was begun in 1953 and finished,
in a manner of speaking, in 1957. However, in light of the fact that
French and English editions were going to be published simultaneously,
George Heard Hamilton redid in 1958 the English translation (which had
been previously done by another and was not good). The simultaneous
publication took place in Paris and in London by the Trianon Press,
as well as in New York by the Grove Press, in 1959.

8.Duchamp
stayed in East Hampton for approximately six weeks. He returned to New
York on Monday, 22 August and most likely went out to Long Island on
Monday, 11 July. "A Conversation with Marcel Duchamp," Robert D. Graff,
producer, NBC, New York, in the "Elder Wise Men" series, first aired
on 15 January 1956.

13.A
mixture of English and French, "l'angrais" (a term proposed by me in
1977) is to Duchamp what "engrais" is to "du champ." [Translator's note:
"engrais" in French means "manure" and "du champ" means "of the field."]
What I call "angrais" is Duchamp's peculiar cross-fertilization
of languages.

14.Two
references must be mentioned in connection with this way of being motionless
"à grande allure" ["at great speed"]: Paul Valéry's important poem,
Le cimetière marin [The graveyard by the sea], stanza XXI, in
Charmes, 1922, and the famous paradox proposed by Zeno of Elea
(5th century BC, 500 years before Plato), "Achille immobile à grands
pas" ["Achilles motionless in great strides"].

15.I
do not forget here, of course, that Robert Lebel, essayist, was also
an expert to the French Customs and that Duchamp, artist, and his friend
Roché, diarist, bought and sold many works of art.

16.The
circumstance can be further pinned down: this exemplary was handed to
Duchamp by Taylor in the name of the College of Pataphysics on 13 January
1965 during the dinner following the opening of the exhibition Not
Seen and/or Less Seen of/by Marcel Duchamp/Rrose Sélavy 1904-1964,
Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, New York. (Exhibition dates: 14 January-13
February 1965.)

17.Translator's
note: French words are denoted as either masculine or feminine and are
modified accordingly. When "l'exemplaire," a masculine word, "becomes
feminine," that is to say that for some reason it has been modified
with an adjective with a feminine, not masculine, ending. The correct
expression would be "premier exemplaire" but the dedication gives us
"première exemplaire." Similarly, "equivalent" is an adjective in the
masculine but it is modifying a feminine word "valeur." And "hommages"
should be modified with an adjective in the masculine but it is given
"pataffectueuses." The proper word here would be "pataffectueux."

19.Still
little known, Jehan Mayoux, who was successively a "primary school teacher,
secondary school teacher and inspector of primary education" (in the
North at the time of this dedication, then in Corrèze), would be imprisoned
during WWII for refusing to mobilize, then suspended during the Algerian
War for being one of those who signedthe "Manifeste des 121" (September
1960) which called for the right not to fight. I quote here the brief
note that Jean-Louis Bédouin credits him with in the anthology La
poésie surréaliste (1964), revised and enlarged edition, Paris,
Seghers, 1970, p. 227.

20.From
Marcel Raval ("[...] a severe oeuvre, befriended with silence: that
of Marcel Duchamp," Les Feuilles libres, Paris, 36, March-June
1924) to Joseph Beuys ("Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird überbewertet"
["The silence of Marcel Duchamp is overrated."], Dusseldorf, 11 December
1964, passing by Andrew Forge ("The Silence of Marcel Duchamp ," The
Listener, London, 5 November 1959) and Georges Charbonnier ("Yet
, it is the silence of a painter that we wish to evoke during this series
of broadcasts: Marcel Duchamp's silence [...] Was Marcel Duchamp indicating
an absolute disagreement when he stopped painting? With what? These
questions will always be present in our minds behind the others we ask...")
– from all this, it is very clear.